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The
most obvious and primitive way to search for
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a
given key is to start at the beginning of the list
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of
data items and look at each item in sequence.
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This
is called a sequential or linear search.
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The
sequential search quits as soon as it finds a
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copy
of the search key in the array. If we are very
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lucky,
the very first key examined may be the one
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we
are looking for. This is the best possible case.
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In
the worst case, the algorithm may search the
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entire
search area - from the first to the last key
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before
finding the search value in the last element
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-- or
finding that it isn't present at all.
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